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THE WORLD (these external links will open in a new window)

Bum Rap(Alternative link)
Excellent essay (from Canada, but of universal relevance) challenging some of the simplistic myths and disingenuous sermonising put about by the anti-spanking brigade. It questions how violence in society can be attributed to spanking when there was more spanking in the past, but less violence than now: "Even without a PhD in sociology, the average person, using his common sense, should be suspicious of studies that claim spanking increases societal violence". The author also pulls to bits the methodology of much "research" purporting to show that spanking is harmful. Well worth downloading and reading in full.

Children's views on corporal punishment
Part of the GITEACPOC website, with various alleged quotations from children in various countries. We are told that "only children can tell us the real nature and extent of corporal punishment as it is being used today, and only children can tell us how it feels physically and emotionally to receive such punishment", which begs an awful lot of questions, but in any case no standard definition is provided for what is regarded as constituting "corporal punishment" for the purposes of these interviews, and reading them in detail it seems pretty clear that in many cases the definition goes far wider than what the phrase has customarily meant. Widely differing phenomena are being conflated here. You get some idea of the level of objectivity of the "research" from this statement on the page for South Africa: [the survey] "explored children's experiences, views and feelings in relation to corporal punishment and other forms of humiliating and degrading punishment ...". I think we are in "When did you stop beating your wife?" territory here.

The Evolution of Childrearing[HISTORY]
Chapter 8 of "The Emotional Life of Nations", a vast "psychohistory" by one Lloyd deMause. He may well be responsible for the currently fashionable notion that almost everything that anyone might do or say probably constitutes "abuse" of some kind. In his desperately bleak world view, adults in all cultures have been abusing children to a massive and unimaginable degree since the dawn of time. He uses a barrage of highly selective quotations from a myriad disparate sources to put the worst possible interpretation on everything. All quite extraordinary, and very hard to take seriously. See the section on "The history of child beating" and its two illustrations, "Mother beating her child" and "Child being beaten by teacher".

AUSTRALIA (these external links will open in a new window)

McClelland smuggles UN rights standards in the back door
A law professor writing in The Australian (June 2010) is alarmed at the vague wording of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which does not ban corporal punishment but which some have chosen to interpret as if it did, such as committees of "overseas experts" who "were wholly undemocratically chosen", some of them from "countries you wouldn't take any moral advice from if your life depended on it". Australia is in danger of outsourcing its human-rights law to these people without realising it, he says.

To Spank or Not to Spank
The Canada Family Action Coalition attacks (July 2001) the authorities for taking children away from their parents in the Aylmer "Church of God" case. It should not be up to bureaucrats to decide whether parents can spank their children. The document's author grew up in Switzerland and says kids there were birched by their parents on their bare bottoms. It is not clear what period we are talking about here.

Euromyths: EU court may ban smacking
The European Union wearily tries to point out, as I have many times myself, that the European Convention on Human Rights, and its associated Court, has nothing to do with the EU, contrary to what ill-informed journalists may write. (Actually, in one rather indirect sense this is not quite as true as it once was: although the Convention dates from before the EU was even thought of, and its machinery is entirely independent of the EU institutions, compliance with it is now being made one of the many conditions for the accession of new EU member states.)
Matters are made particularly confusing by the fact that the EU does have a court, whose task is the enforcement of EU law -- the European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg -- which is a completely different entity from the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg. It remains the case that such matters as corporal punishment form no part of EU law.

FRANCE (these external links will open in a new window)

Gluttons for punishment
A French writer on the Guardian blog discusses a survey showing that an overwhelming majority of three generations in France have been spanked, are spanking their children or will be spanking their children at some point in the future. However, the martinet is falling out of use, she says.

Krover Nacktarsch wine labels
Bottle labels for a German Mosel wine showing jokey drawings of a small boy being spanked by the Kellermeister for drinking the wine and getting drunk. Nacktarsch actually means "bare bottom". There have been many different versions of the label over the decades.

Heidi and Peter(Alternative link)
Article about a Swiss children's film made in 1955. This still from the film (right) is captioned "Grandfather prepares Peter for corporal punishment!". Maybe this tells us something about domestic CP in rural Switzerland in real life 50 years ago. Or maybe not.

UNITED KINGDOM (these external links will open in a new window)

Punishing parents
Essay (2004) by academic Frank Furedi attacking new legislation in the UK that seeks to restrict parental smacking. He points out that many advocates of a total ban on physical punishment are actually against all forms of punishing children. He sees the underlying agenda as an anti-parent crusade, and adds that the much-cited Murray Straus "research" is far less clear-cut than the claims made on its behalf by "anti-smacking zealots" like the egregious Penelope Leach. It's refreshing to have an undoubted member of the intelligentsia saying these things.

The Beano[HISTORY]
A Cardiff newspaper attempts (Jan 2005) to put a Welsh gloss on the legendary weekly boys' comic, which of course was equally popular in England and actually published in Scotland. Refers to Dennis the Menace -- a strip launched in 1951, it says here; I'd always assumed it dated from the 1930s -- and the "inevitable slippering from Dad" that usually came in the last panel. The writer of this piece, who is no doubt too young to know, seems to think the Beano's heyday was the 1970s; I'd say it was at least 20 years earlier than that.

Nooks and crannies[HISTORY]
Still on the subject of the Beano (see previous item), a letterwriter to the London Guardian found some old copies of it in the attic and expresses amazement at the amount of parental slippering shown. Was the slipper, she asks, really used so commonly in UK homes, and, if so, was the Beano responsible or was it just reflecting society at the time? Dozens of readers reply, personal reminiscences à l'appui, that the answers are "yes" and "the latter", respectively.

Corporal Punishment (September 98)[HISTORY]
Part of a site called "The Underwater Crypt", whose author makes a point of questioning conventional wisdoms. He pokes some fun at the currently fashionable "experts". At the bottom of the page is a nice animated cartoon (with sound!) "to annoy the politically correct" and also a Dennis the Menace slippering scene. He has now added a wise footnote on the recent campaign to ban parental CP in the UK.

Smacking: orientations, situations and justifications
Part of a research paper, Disciplining children: Research with parents in Scotland, published by the Scottish government. "Smacking" is UK-speak for spanking, more or less. Most parents are ambivalent, with support greater amongst the working class.

Discipline: to spank or not to spank?
A website devoted to Home Education in the UK attempts to reconcile polarised views. "Each extreme has caricatured ideas of the other" and meanwhile most ordinary parents, who don't support either extreme, are ignored.

For Consideration & Prayer
"Friends and Family", a Christian group in the UK, calls on child welfare groups "to concentrate on working with damaged children and not to trivialise the real abuse of these children by equating it with smacking in the context of a normal loving family setting".

In Defense of Spanking: What Every Parent Should Know About Corporal Punishment
An educator, psychologist and father of three, Paul J. Preston, presents a whole website of several pages explaining why spanking is needed and countering the views of the anti-spank "experts". As he says, "we have allowed the anti-spanking movement to shape the debate", and it is time for parents to fight back. He makes commonsense suggestions about how and when to spank. Refreshingly, all this is based on pragmatic considerations, not religious ones, and he also doesn't exclude spanking older teens when they need it.

Spanking mad
Long and thorough article in Salon.com (Feb 2007) prompted by the failed attempt to ban domestic CP in California. When, the author wonders, did a swat on the bum become child abuse?

Use the Rod, Spoil the Child
Is corporal punishment the proper way to nurture moral character? No, says this article in Sojourners Magazine (April 2005).

Bob Jennings' World o' Racing
This page about motor racing mentions, apropos of nothing in particular, that racing driver Jack Hewitt was seen spanking his young son in the pits in 1986. The author opines that if he did that now he would be arrested.

Everybody Can Get ChrisNational Review Online article (Sep 2005) about Chris Rock, the inspiration for a TV comedy show called Everybody Hates Chris, mentions his mother's "relentlessly pro-spanking philosophy".

Discipline, not spanking, is the issue
Syndicated article (May 2006) by John Rosemond, something of a bête noir of the no-spank people. He claims to have been misunderstood, and that he's not really all that much in favour of parental spanking after all. In particular, he thinks biblical references to "the rod" were only ever meant metaphorically, and should not be taken to mean CP specifically. He just doesn't believe it's an area where the government should interfere.

Labor laws and personal beliefs collide
An illustrated piece from the Seattle Times (July 2004) about a Christian fundamentalist who employs his sons, aged 12 and 15 (pictured), in his construction business. The state does not approve. He's also been in trouble over corporal punishment when he was running a homeless shelter, so presumably these boys got their fair share of spankings.

The ABCs of Liberal 'Journalism'
A spokesman for something called the "Culture & Family Institute", evidently yet another right-wing thinktank, berates (May 2005) the mainstream media for their anti-spanking bias.

Spare the Rod? New Research Challenges Spanking Critics
1996 paper by the Family Research Council points out that many "studies" fail to distinguish between "appropriate spanking" and "kicking, punching and beating" and thus arrive the false conclusion that all disciplinary spanking is harmful.

Naughty Kids Discipline EquipmentNaughty Kids Punishment PantsNaughty Kids Punishment ClothingNaughty Kids Punishment Stickers and Badges
Here you can order clothing, e.g. underpants with "please remove before spanking" on the back; stickers and badges ("This Naughty Child has been Spanked over Mummy's Knee"); implements (e.g. hairbrush with "spanked boy" logo); and, best of all, "Punishment Pants for Boys", with miniature electrodes sewn into them. "With Johnny dressed in a pair of Punishment Pants, mummy can simply deliver a spank to the boy's bare bottom at the touch of a button". P.S. it's all a joke -- I think. As someone remarked in the site's Guest Book (now disappeared), this should get the humourless anti-spanking brigade wonderfully riled up.

Parents, Politics And The Breakdown Of The Family(Alternative link)
Article (July 2005) by a novelist, Timothy Stelly, who argues that children need fathers to be around, as well as mothers, and they also need discipline. He claims that children from fatherless homes are "20 times more likely to have behavioral issues" and cites an amazing statistic (which I haven't been able to check) that 85% of all youths in prison grew up in a fatherless home. The anti-spanking law in Sweden is described as a failed experiment.

Fellowship Baptist Church: Rebellion
"God designed chastisement as the proper force to be used by parents to control the rebellion of their children", according to this Texas-based outfit. The document goes into detail about exactly how to do the chastising, including the dimensions of different sizes of dowel rods for different ages of children. You are recommended to stop in between each set of three swats to "give the child a chance to surrender".

Old Order Mennonites
The Mennonites in question are rural, German-speaking, fundamentalist Protestants living in New York State who routinely use corporal punishment on their children. This is a review of a book about them, raising questions about whether the public authorities should leave them to carry on their lives as they see fit, or attempt by force to bring them into line with what is currently deemed to be fashionable in "modern America".

Parenting: Discipline
A thread on a message board called The Cellar tackles the subject of parental spanking. There are the usual wildly conflicting and mostly drearily familiar opinions (many of them half-baked and badly expressed), and the usual complete failure to arrive at any consensus. There seem to be discussions like this on hundreds of message boards out there. Do they serve any useful purpose? Who can be bothered to plough through all this stuff?

Corporal punishment
A thread (2004) on a message board for Nigerians in America. Most of the contributors extol the merits of the "ass whippings" they got back home in Africa, and take a dim view of American kids' out-of-control behavior which results (in their view) from a currently fashionable reluctance to spank.

Christian crusaders go to battle over spanking
Feb 2005 news item from the San Francisco Chronicle about disagreements within Christianity over CP for kids, sparked by advertisements selling "The Rod", a 22-inch nylon whipping stick, "the ideal tool for child training".

Mother irate at spanking claim
News from Wyoming (July 2004) about a boy who claimed a neighbour spanked him in the street, which the neighbour plausibly denies. Looks like a stupid fuss about nothing by the typically overindulgent, self-obsessed mother of a lying, whiny brat.

Chris Castile: A Christian Kid in Hollywood[HISTORY]
This soi-disant "teen acting sensation" (of whom I had never heard) reveals that he got his share of spankings when younger. Brats need spanking, in his view, and today's parents should not be afraid to discipline their teenagers.

Jesus Christ suffered, crucified, buried
More religion. It's astonishing how much of this kind of stuff there is out there. Anyway, about three quarters of the way down the page, the author describes receiving trousers-down spankings from his father.

The Sons of Murphy Brown: Wimps and Barbarians
Long Kulturkampf essay on the lamentable state of modern American boys brought about by currently fashionable styles of upbringing. Part of the problem, the author suggests, is that they never get spanked, though there is a great deal more to it than that, to do with the need to rediscover the concept of manliness. An unexpectedly cultured and literate piece, in places quite persuasive, though I doubt if many people these days think that men should hold doors open for women just because they are women. (I prefer to hold doors open for human beings, without regard to what kind of sexual organs they happen to have.) Oddly, the author turns out to be the principal of a private school that doesn't use CP.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Coasts
The Hoover Institution notes (1998) that support for CP in the USA is strongest in the "heartland" (especially in the South, but also the mid-West). Opponents are to be found mainly in California and the North-east. Much as one would expect, in fact.

Woman Sentenced for Child Abuse
Depressing Florida case from July 2003. The accused had beaten her children with a variety of objects. "When a parent uses an object to spank a child it qualifies as abuse", a self-appointed "expert" told the court. Quite how the four kids were going to be helped by putting their mother in prison for four years -- rather than, for instance, working with her to improve her parenting techniques -- isn't explained.

The sad ballad of Bing and his boys[HISTORY]
Unhappy story of the lives of Bing Crosby's offspring. He whipped his sons (or so one of them alleges) on their bare backsides with a studded belt and, later, a cane, until they bled. This went on until they were 18.

The Definitive Crosby Biography[HISTORY]San Francisco Chronicle review of a new biography of Bing, "the only major figure in popular music who had a classical education" (at Gonzaga, a strict Jesuit high school). He was much nicer than you think, according to this, and it appears the CP allegations may have been exaggerated. Also, the author has found magazine articles from the 1950s in which Crosby said how much he regretted hitting his kids. Either way, none of it seems to have done them much good -- they all ended up as drunken wastrels, and two of them have committed suicide.

Embarrassing College 1966[HISTORY]
A former victim of Garner Ted Armstrong's World Wide Church of God (see previous item) writes that he was still getting pants-down spankings, up to three times a day, at age 18.

Women's Dress Ruling, by Herbert W. Armstrong[PDF][HISTORY]
More unintentional hilarity from the World Wide Church of God (see previous two items). In this article from 1962, Armstrong père delivers himself of the view that any girl or woman wearing a short, tight skirt needs "a sound spanking of what she so brazenly displays".

Appreciating The Ultimate Dad
Scroll down to Section II, "A father's discipline", in this article from the Davis Chinese Christian Church of California.

Sitting in jail for spanking
Article (November 2002) in the Las Vegas Review-Journal about parents being persecuted by "social workers" for spanking their own kids.

"The Spanking"[HISTORY]
Author of a weblog describes a belting he received at the hands of his father.

The Resistant Child
Website for parents who educate their children at home. This particular page advocates giving "three very hard whacks on the bottom with a paddle".

Spank me mommy one more time[PDF]
From "Carpe Diem", student magazine of Decatur High School, Georgia (January 2001). Several students think parental spankings can be useful. Illustrated with a posed picture of an adolescent bottom being spanked.

Training for Self-discipline and Self-restraint
Chapter 13 of an online book called "The Bible's Way to Victory over ADHD and Other Childhood Challenges". This challenges the illogicality of the anti-spankers who declare that CP leads to violence. If that were true, say the authors, "the first half of the twentieth century should have been a hellish period of violent crime", since most kids got spanked in those days.

Corporal punishment of children (Spanking)
From the "Religious tolerance" website, this purports to be a summary of the case for and against parental spanking, but is heavily biased towards the anti-spanking side of the argument.

Bill of Rights for Religious Communities and Their Members
A proposed voluntary contract for those quirky religious communes that live in their own little world separate from everybody else. There are guidelines for the use of corporal punishment (see under "Right to Moderation and Common Sense in the Administration of Discipline").

Social change and trends in approval of corporal punishment by parents from 1968 to 1994[PDF]
This is by Dr Murray Straus. It's mainly about the smacking of toddlers, which in my view is at best only on the margins of "corporal punishment", and arguably has nothing to do with corporal punishment at all, as properly defined; but it generated a lot of publicity about spanking generally. Some of the background discussion covers social attitudes to CP in a wider context.

Go find me a switch you little lawmaker
Columnist in a Honolulu newspaper (March 1996) has a go at the Hawaii legislature for trying to ban spanking in the home. The problem, in his view, is not that there is too much spanking, but that there is not enough.